feng shui?

so i've been in a funk lately.

i believe this funk has a lot to do both with the weather and why i haven't felt any sun on my shoulders yet, and with the energy that i've kept/keep around me.

i admitted this to a friend who said i should look into this book "clear your clutter with feng shui" and while this same friend suggested i read the secret and i've been rejecting it since, i did decide to hear her out on this one and went and bought the book.

it's interesting how it described your living space as containing 9 different aspects of your life. i did the chart based on my bedroom and realized i had clutter and poetry books where there should be "space" for relationships....and old clothes where there should be space for friendship...things that used to be clean are now a bit funky, where i had elders and family and creativity and projects...

next week i move and i have about 2 months before i'm secure in any one place so i can't really put this into too much work right now....but it's definitely something i'm going to consider - the way energy works and is blocked and stopped and held up.

the distance

i never appreciated distance with writing. many writers will tell you that you need to let something sit before you go back and make changes. I never appreciated that, along with revision...I always said I hated revision. I still dislike it, but I appreciate its worth.

Right now I have 125 pages of a novel I started back in March. I was supposed to be done with the first draft on Sunday. I guess you could call this my first draft, but no. I still think I have another 75-100 pages left to go before what I imagined to be the narrative arc to be finished. But I'm sort of stuck, you see. I know why I'm stuck, I just haven't really found the way out. Kind of like when you're in a patch of really soft, muddy land in your car and your back tires just can't get enough friction to get out...so you're spinning and revving your engine and keep trying to get your wheels to turn but you just can't. You just can't get out. You know why you're stuck...sure. It's the mud. It's the lack of friction. But no matter how hard you press the gas, until you add that wood plank or until someone comes and pulls you out, you are going to go no where.

That's where I am.

But what I decided to do instead of waste my gas in a world where gas is $4.00 a gallon (or more!), was turn off the engine, rest. I decided not to call the guys to come and pull me out just yet.

Right now I'm slowly editing the first part of my novel, in what I imagine will have 5 parts, I believe. At first i thought three. Then I thought four. But I don't think a novel would feel right with four parts. I think either 3 or 5. So I'm going with five. I think. The first part is 47 pages, though with all of the text I'm writing in the novels and with some of the spaces I still have to fill, the questions I am able to ask now that I have some separation and some forsight on at least the next 75 pages, I think this section will definitely grow. It's growing. I see it. I sense it. My novel.

Some goals for the next few months:
Get to 150 pages BEFORE Cave Canem. That means 25 pages in a month. Come on. A page a day. That's nothing compared to my rate that I pumped out the first couple hundred pages!

I have to say before Cave Canem, because literally, I have a day after CC and then I'm off to Connecticut for my Soul Mountain retreat for 2.5 weeks. There, I would like to have my draft FINISHED as well as a chapbook. And some new headway on my Palestine project which is looking more and more like a realistic thing.

Other things I would like for the second half of 2008 as far as career and writing go:

A literary agent. Know one? Send them my way.
Book Five Poetry readings in 2009.
Get more fiction accepted for publication. Which means write more fiction, send more fiction out!
More poetry publications.

Yep.

Purple nail polish

i was feeling relatively down earlier this week with all the drama going on in my life. there is good stuff going around, don't get me wrong, and on some days the good overshadows the bad...things like stressing over who to thank on an acknowledgements page or who to blurb your published book, or what your cover is going to look like, etc etc. good things. but then the other stuff, the heavier stuff comes in a like an unexpected rain storm and stays for a while and rains all day on your one day off (sorry, i'm bitter: it's friday, and it rained today, as it did last friday...my one day off!) and you realize that everything that came before doesn't really matter in that moment that you're soaking wet and walking down the streets of harlem looking to eat at this vegetarian restaurant.

i don't know where that's going.

but, earlier this week my friends were getting manicures and pedicures and i didn't want to spend all that money, so i just got a nail color change. i picked up this fuschia-colored nail polish that is funky and girly and makes me smile when i look at it. i think i'm going to get this done more often....go and just have someone do something for me for a few minutes that will last for a while.

i'm always doing things for others...

drowning

i forgot for most of the day that i dreamt last night that i was drowning. that is, until i got to work and things were hitting the fan from left and from the right and i remembered maybe it was referencing my job, this drowning feeling that i had. basically i was in shallow water where i could see that someone was sitting on a pier right where i was drowning, and i couldn't really do anything. ironically, i had a dream about this, and was thinking about an important part in my novel that i am writing, a part that talks about how the infant is so used to water b/c while in the womb, it breathed it in through its mouth and nose. so that's how i didn't panic, i was filling my body, through my mouth and nose with water. when i realized that it wasn't keeping me alive, i still didn't panic. i still was moving this water, and it was slowing me down and i felt my body shutting down, and finally i move myself, underwater still, nearer to the pier, where right before i think that i'm going to die, i do the one thing i can do and that's lift my hand above the water and hope the person sees and pulls me out. and they do. and then i guess i either woke up or switched gears in the dream.

my secret

so in a world of self-help books i find it interesting that everyone is willing to read a self-help book but not perhaps a religious self-help book, though i would argue books like the secret and such are steeped in religious fundamentals and philosophies and such that they secularize it and market it to people who don't believe in the divine.

i believe in the divine though my belief comes with a long line of arguments and conversation and some uncertainty, though i think this is the age of questions, and i'm a mere product of my environment more than anything else. this culture/age is a culture of questions and not many answers, and we're brought up doubting and it would be fake of me to say i've not ever had questions in the things that i believe that i've never argued with God about things...

but, i will say that because my belief is steeped in the divine, i believe that everything that has happened to me has been ordained by something/someone else, and that all my success should be credited not to myself but to God.

i started 2008 in celebration. i didn't know what i was celebrating yet, but i was at my friend's house and i said we need to go out and celebrate this year and what's coming. in 2006, i had this feeling that i would be published within the next two years. call it intuition which i think is a selfish term for what i believe is a divine voice speaking to me. i told a friend to keep me accountable, and to have someone be able to say "yes, she said this to me two years ago" so then i don't sound like a spook or an idiot, though having that confirmed makes things a bit more difficult to explain away.

my secret is listening and following directions and following directions in an unfettered path, in a direct, straight line to where you see yourself. there should be no detours. of course, you can't help detours, but you must turn those detours into the path still getting you where you need to be. i consider my going to rutgers was a detour. but at the same time it was a step in the right direction: i don't think i would have submitted my manuscript (i was sitting on it for most of 2007 without submitting it anywhere) anywhere if i were still in school and thinking i should be holding these poems that i was writing for a new manuscript and i was ready to throw the old one out and get rid of it...but some divine timing occurred, and doors opened, and i believe that is the key: when you see a door open you have some choices to make: you either walk through the door, or you stand there and look into the room you could be standing in, or you turn around and walk away. most times, i walk through doors, and then deal with what's in the room when i'm in there. never turn your back on a door. never.

blessings

The Lord is giving to us daily.

Quick announcement, then I must run away to a poetry workshop.

While I was in South Carolina (note: I did not make the trip just for this) I was able to attend the SC Poetry Book prize winning announcement. This year's judge was Elizabeth Alexander (announced the week before they announced the winner), who is my idol, whom I adore and read her critical and poetic works.

There was a reading and music and food and fellowship. I had a friend with me, though, unsure of the results, I failed to invite my parents because I believed it would be boring to them.

After Elizabeth's great reading, she announced who she chose for the 2008 book prize winner.

My manuscript, How God Ends Us was chosen as the winner. I was estactic and still cannot believe it, really.

Look for my book due out in early 2009. Lots of work to be done!

Yay God, yay universe, yay blessings.

homecoming

so my kids in nyc are on spring break. i decided that i needed some fresh air (literally and figuratively) from nyc and nj and everything around it, so i decided to come home. i should say, too, it's mostly because i was homesick and didn't want to admit it, but now being home, i'm realizing it really was mostly being homesick, missing the people who love me most, and being around family.

i'm saddened by the number of times i blog somewhere about a death in my life/family. i had another relative pass away while i was home. i can't say i didn't know it was coming. i sort of felt it. i felt it in my bones, in an unexplainable feeling i get when i feel the universe shift. it happens that i feel like crap and then the answer reveals itself. so another family member is gone, and there's this void...ut it's interesting how a void builds a bond. how the maintenance of the universe works so that because no energy is ever lost, there is a building when there is a destroying, and each family member is filling in the certain spaces, the voids.

it's also interesting to see how my role in the family shifts as i come home each time, or during a time of duress. my father is the rock. i am the pebble by the rock. they look to me to keep everything together, to be strong. it's interesting: here i am strong (by here i mean my current location, home, SC). when i'm away, i'm increasingly weak. Perhaps the strength is in family.

it is. i miss it. i almost don't want to go back to new jersey.